A 21st Century Grouch

[ase]

Signs I am not going to drown in my own phlegm and die: I am filled with irritation by minor impediments, and shaving all the hair off my head doesn't sound like the worst idea ever. (R. thinks the raspy phlegm voice is hilarious. I am pleased I can entertain people between bouts of self-doubt and tea.)


I'm doing some copy and style editing for an acquaintance taking a web 2.0 course. I started compiling a list of blogs I consider high quality, and noticed a trend. Other than a heavy geek slant, what do Making Light, Bad Astronomy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Whatever have in common? I see

• significant moderator presence


• blogger/mod regulars have been through at least one flamewar


• "personal" content (kids, spouses, opinions)


• entries tend to be long.

And that's when I realized: I hate 90% of social networking sites. I am not tight with the Twitter and Tumblr model, and I don't care enough to get up to speed in the near future.

Look at that list again. Many of those blogs include short posts, but also include multiparagraph entries. Twitter, facebook, mini news updates: why should I click through ten pages to get ten sentences? Stuff that hasn't even the promise of the Mighty Modly Banhammer, should commenters get hot-blooded? The house internet likes work slowdowns and dropped packets too often for 100% smooth internet, so excessive clickthrough is inefficient and makes me grouchy. (This is a known problem, relating to either the ISP or the lines. Anyway!) Long format is my natural milieu. I am unhappy at two paragraphs or less, unless there's a witty punchline. If I understand correctly, web 2.0 includes about user-added content and social networking as major tenants, but what I actually see is mostly recycled content, or comments without context, or links to third party sources. Forget that noise. If I've gone to the effort of finding and reading your blog, I want to read something relevant to my life: the personal experiences of friends (LJ/DW), what's going on locally (SF Chronicle) and elsewhere (Washington Post, Nature and Science news blurbs), op-ed on what's going on in the world (all of the above and others) and random meta that may improve my life. Lousy content-to-junk ratio may not be intrinsic to Twitter and Facebook, but it's pretty endemic when I try to wade in. If web 2.0 looks like twits and FB updates, I'm going to be getting curmudgeonly sooner than I think. It's a bummer for this copy-editing gig, because they're trying to do a minimum-effort school project, and I'm going to give them feedback demanding actual paragraphs, but it's soothing for me to discover there's a shiny toy I really don't regret leaving on the shelf. (For now.)


Okay, one unmitigated good thing, because today should close on a high note: I didn't thoroughly check the Asian Art Museum's reciprocal admission benefits when I bought a discounted "me + 1" membership. Please note that several San Francisco institutes of fine arts are listed, most of which I have not yet explored. Go me!

Comments

[damned_colonial]

So, I agree with you, except about the definition of web 2.0, which as I understand it (and I'm basing this on Tim O'Reilly's original definition) is about systems which become better the more people use them, ideally exponentially. That is, twice as many people using the system doesn't make it twice as good, but more than twice as good. Any "network" type site achieves this, *including* LJ/DW. Some non-network sites achieve this (Amazon or Netflix are good examples, because of how ratings and recommendations get better the more people use them. Google is another interesting example: it relies on millions upon millions of people's contributions who don't even realise they're contributing, just by linking to a webpage from their own sites, or clicking on any link served up by Google.)

Interestingly, a single blog by itself isn't web2.0, but a blog with an active commenting community (like those you list) might be, and the sum total of blogs ("the blogosphere") almost certainly is.

[ase]

Thanks for the definition! I've heard the phrase "web 2.0" tossed around a lot, usually without clarification attached, so I may be conflating some parts of it with social networking and microblogging. The way you're describing it reminds me of the "all knowledge is contained in [group]" appeals for information I've seen in different online communities.

[marahmarie]

Web 2.0 is also about a more semantic, user-friendly web where resources are tied together and interlinked easily to put maximum knowledge at your fingertips. But that's incidental to the overall meaning of Web 2.0, which is almost entirely what has been said in your post and in the comments.

Those are pretty much my thoughts on FB, Twitter, et al, btw...I cannot stand and barely have any use for those services on most of the same principles, and for the same reasons. They're a waste of time.

I got online when Web 2.0 was just emerging so Twitter didn't exist yet and FB was college alum only; outside of chat and IRC all we had were long, well-composed articles on blogs, journals and news sites to learn anything about the world or each other.

I liked it better that way. I've barely been online 6 years and I already sound like an old fart, but it's how I feel.

Twitter (one line blurbs) often unconnected and unconnectable isn't progress to me. Facebook is nearly indecipherable from soup to nuts: I don't get Walls, Updates, or what passes for News over there - and I don't want to - I mostly just use the PM system to stay in touch with a few friends, and even then, kicking and screaming all the way, at least in my mind, at the nuisance of it all.

[ase]

The overlap between DW users and a preference for long-form blogging is notable, but probably includes a certain degree of self-selection. Asking, say, Twitter users what they see in Twitter would probably yield different opinions about its value.

[marahmarie]

I can't deny Twitter has real utility as a real-time messaging system - there's probably no better way to get breaking news, if you pay a lot of attention and choose the best filters - and I've always said so. I think Twitter is genuinely fabulous for that. But as a communication tool to get less-pressing stuff out to others, not so much at all.